I am an art teacher and I was asked to run an eBay art auction, Sophie’s Postcards, in memory of Sophie Maria Taylor, a pupil at my school who died from cancer at the age of 12 last April. It far exceeded our expectations with contributions by Sir Quentin Blake, Harry Potter illustrator Thomas Taylor and many other artists and pupils.

The works were turned into 570 postcards and all the money raised is to go to The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. The total was £11,988.96.

However, I was utterly horrified when I saw there was only £11,381.71 in the PayPal account used for processing payments.

I had previously been advised by PayPal that I could not use the charitable account I’d set up for the event since the school is not a charity, so I switched it to a normal account.

It never told me it would be taking a massive £607 in fees – money raised by the hard work of so many dedicated children and artists.

I hoped that they might, at least, offer a donation but nothing.

MP, Bexhill, East Sussex"

PayPal, in its response to you, appeared to blame you for downgrading your account from charitable status and said that for lower fees to be applied you should have applied for charity rates in advance. Which you did, and which PayPal refused because your school is not a registered charity.

In its reply to me, however, it acknowledges that it boobed. “Due to human error, we did not suggest that MP should take advantage of eBay for Charity when she first contacted us for help,” it says.

“This programme, supported by the PayPal Giving Fund, allows sellers to donate 100% of the proceeds of their sales on eBay to a certified charity.”

Happily, it’s decided to refund all the fees, but it’s depressing that, without media intervention, it would have allowed its own mistake to deprive a charity of such a significant sum .

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